Odisha, January 19, 2022 (PPI-OT):People of Dhinkia in Odisha’s Jagatsinghpur district barricaded their village entrance following the violent police crackdown on Friday for protesting against a proposed steel plant. A faceoff between villagers and police turned violent, leading to nearly 50 villagers sustaining injuries. Male policemen were caught on camera attacking women during the crackdown. Activists claims that injured children and women have not even received medical assistance due to the hostile situation. 15 policemen sustaining injuries and five villagers were arrested, Indian Express reported.

After winning a decade-long battle to evict POSCO, the South Korean global steel company in 2017, the villagers renewed their protest last month after government planned to hand over the land to JSW Utkal Steel Limited. JSW Steel has proposed to establish a 13.2 million tonnes per annum (MTPA) capacity steel plant at an estimated cost of around Rs 55,000 crore. Government claims that the land was transferred to JSW Steel in 2017.

The villagers alleged that since Thursday, police had been forcibly destroying their betel vines to set up the steel plant. The crackdown sparked outrage from activists across India. The land acquisition process is stopped due to the hostile situation in the locality.

The village has been protesting since December last year after the demarcation of Mahala, a newly created revenue village in the panchayat. The villagers accuse that the demarcation was done to divide the village and scatter the villagers in order to derail the movement against the proposed steel plant.

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